Officials say they hope FutureGen efforts not wasted, Working for bid from energy company for similar plant

Kathleen ThurberMidland Reporter-Telegram

Published 7:00 pm, Tuesday, April 15, 2008

By Kathleen Thurber

Staff Writer

Three years of vying for the location of the FutureGen energy development project may not have been in vain as a private company is now looking for a place in Texas to develop a similar energy plant, officials said Tuesday.

Colorado-based company Summit Power Group announced this month it plans to build a site in Texas to utilize the same clean coal technology the FutureGen project would have used, and officials say the Permian Basin is a contender for the project.

"We know they're going to build," said Hoxie Smith, director of Midland College's Petroleum Professional Development Center, at a presentation to the Society for Sedimentary Geology Tuesday. "We want them to come here."

The Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) process creates clean energy from coal while sequestering Carbon Dioxide (CO2). But, while the CO2 would have to be safely sequestered below ground by the power company at other sites, in the Permian Basin it could be sold to oil and gas companies which already buy and put underground about 1.4 billion cubic feet of CO2 each day as part of enhancing oil production, said Stephen Melzer, a geological engineer and consultant.

The Department of Energy had looked at a site outside of Odessa near Penwell as one of the finalists for the FutureGen plant, but said it had chosen a site in Illinois before announcing in January the plan to build a single plant was being reworked.

The DOE would have paid 74 percent of what was projected in 2003 to be a ,1 billion project. But, after costs had nearly doubled by 2008 and looked as if they would only continue to increase, the DOE said it decided to partially fund several clean coal generating sites instead of just one.

The Permian Basin site looked at for the FutureGen efforts should be a main contender for the privately-built plant as Summit begins making a decision, Smith said. The site would save the company about 15 percent of the operating budget generally needed to sequester CO2 since the element could be sold for about ,1.50 per 1,000 cubic feet, said Smith, who was also the Permian Basin FutureGen Task Force coordinator.

The FutureGen power plant would have been an about 275 megawatt plant, Melzer said. The plant Summit plans to build in Texas will be a 600 megawatt plant, which translates to about a ,3 billion project.

A plant like this would only add to other alternative energy sources such as wind and solar energy already being produced in the region, Smith said. Texas is currently the top producer of wind energy in the U.S., and most of the area's wind energy is funneled to the Metroplex, he said.

Such wind energies will continue to grow, Melzer said, but the resource still needs work to become a main power source. Coal plants, which currently produce about 50 percent of the country's energy will have to be taken off-line if a cleaner method can't be used, he said.

These clean coal plants then, would serve to supplement current energy use and fill the growing need for energy in a state that is projected to see a more than 18 percent growth in the next 10 years, Smith said.

Even though Texas is one of the top producers of wind energy, Smith said, wind still only accounts for about 3.3 percent of overall energy use.

Smith said unless Texas can find additional energy sources, it can expect to see rolling blackouts in coming years and that the IGCC plants would provide a more reliable source than wind.

Challenges for bringing such a plant to the Permian Basin include transporting coal to the site and finding enough available water to complete the process, both things the DOE noted when considering the site, said Steven Schafelsman, a consulting scientist who was sitting in on the presentation.

"I'm still skeptical that water is available," Schafelsman said.

Melzer said there are a few options for water resources, one of which includes the desalination of low-quality ground water. Smith said the process can't be proposed until a customer is available, which this project would readily provide.

Coal would likely come from the Powder River Basin, which is where a similar plant in Sweetwater Texas plans to bring the resource in from, Melzer said.

Smith said Summit's main concern is finding an outlet for the power. He said the group is working to get area leaders to send letters of support to the company about the need for such resources here.

"The main thing is our FutureGen efforts are not going to go to waste," Smith said.